How to Schedule and Deliver Automated Reports

Overview

Manual report generation doesn’t scale. Mango by Radix IoT’s Excel Reports module runs a report template on a schedule and emails the finished workbook, so stakeholders get the same report in their inbox every day, week or month without anyone pulling data. This guide covers the delivery side: the schedule, the email, testing, and keeping many reports running reliably. Building the template itself (named ranges, time periods, mapping points) is covered in Creating Excel Reports with Scheduled Email Delivery.

Prerequisites

• The Excel Reports module. Its free license allows one report template; more than one needs the paid license (see Managing Many Reports)
• Outbound email working: Administration > System settings > Email settings, with Disable sending emails unticked. Send test email there sends to your own user’s address
• A report template whose time periods are Relative or Specific, not Not specified (Mango will not save a schedule otherwise)
• Data points logging history for the periods you report on

Step 1: Open the Template and Set Its Periods

1. Navigate to Analytics > Excel reports. The Report templates tab lists your templates; Finished / in-progress reports lists every run
2. Select a template, or New template. Its editor has the tabs Report setup, Time periods, Post processing script, Schedule and Email (plus Email model script while email is on)
3. On Time periods, set each period to Relative so every run computes its own window:

Previous means complete periods before the current one; Past counts back from the moment the report runs.

Step 2: Set the Schedule

1. Open the Schedule tab and tick Schedule this template to be run periodically. The Cron pattern field and the pattern builder appear under Select cron pattern
2. Type a pattern into Cron pattern, or build one with the Second, Minute, Hour, Day of month, Month and Day of week menus
3. Click Save

Mango’s cron patterns have six fields with seconds first: second, minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Put ? in whichever of the two day fields you are not using. Patterns run in the Mango server’s time zone.

Mango refuses to save a schedule it cannot parse, or one whose template still has a Not specified time period (Date range required for scheduled reports).

Step 3: Configure Email Delivery

1. Open the Email tab. Email report is ticked on a new template; leave it ticked
2. Under Email template, keep reportEmailBody.ftl unless you have your own
3. Under Email recipients, add who receives it: Select users (Mango users, at their own email addresses), Select mailing lists, or type an address into Add email address and press Enter. Mango will not save an emailed template with no recipients
4. Tick Compress attachments to send the workbook as a .zip
5. Click Save

Each email attaches the finished workbook in the template’s own format (.xlsx, .xls or .xlsm). Its body, from the email template, summarizes the run: the report name, when it ran, how long it took, the record count, and each period’s dates and points. There is no CSV or PDF option, and the report’s data is not placed in the email body.

Mailing lists live at Event Management > Mailing lists. Use them instead of individual addresses, so a change of staff is one edit.

Step 4: Test the Report

1. On Report templates, click Run (the play icon) on the template’s row. Run uses the saved settings, so with Email report ticked every recipient gets the email
2. To test without emailing everyone, click Configure and run (the clock icon) instead, untick Email report in its dialog (you can also change the time range for this one run), and click Run
3. Open Finished / in-progress reports. Each run moves through Queued and Running to Finished, Failed or Email failed. Download and View open the file
4. Check that the file holds data for the period you expected, and that the email arrived with its attachment

Other Ways to Deliver a Report

Managing Many Reports

• Check the license first. With more templates than the license allows, every run fails with Excel Reports module is licensed for fewer templates than exist. A manual Run shows the error; a scheduled run only writes it to the log
• Stagger schedules. At the default Work item priority of Low (Administration > System settings > Excel reports), Mango’s own help says “Low priority will run reports in the order they are scheduled one by one”, so ten reports due at 6:00 queue behind each other. Offset them by a few minutes, or choose High or Medium, which let several run at once
• Name templates by site and frequency: “BLDG-A Daily Summary”, “ALL-SITES Weekly Performance”
• Watch Finished / in-progress reports for Failed and Email failed runs

Verification

• A test run reaches Finished in Finished / in-progress reports
• The file opens and holds data for the expected period
• The email arrives with the workbook attached
• The Cron pattern reads as intended, seconds first
• The first scheduled run appears in Finished / in-progress reports at the expected time

Troubleshooting